My Sankofa Seed Moment
It’s kind of like that joke about the the two young fish that run into the old fish, and the old fish says, Hey, boys, how’s the water? And the young fish say, What’s water? Storytelling was the water that was all around me.
The Story of Our Stuff
As I have slept on hospital recliners, created calendars for coordinating treatment transportation and meal drop-offs, and called on networks for everything from emotional support to equipment donations, one clarion call keeps echoing in my ear. We are not doing elderhood the right way around here. It is terrifying, isolating. It can break your back and your bank.
Stranded at the Drive-In
A few years ago, I started letting go of many films in my ritual because, as someone pointed out to me, I ostensibly wanted to bring change into my life and perhaps doing the same thing over and over again was not serving that purpose. And, hello, watching He’s Just Not That Into You on Valentine’s Day was perhaps not the most efficacious way to find my semi-permanent dance partner.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves Are What Others Hear
There are some stories, and Shannon the Underdog Atlanta Online Dating Girl was one of them, that become a stuck/repeating tape loop. When I first moved to Atlanta in 2008, I threw myself headlong into the newly ubiquitous (read: now-not-so-skeevy) online dating...
Far & Away
People travel all the time. Maybe less so these days, but it’s just something that happens a lot, for personal and professional reasons. Can’t tell you how many times I see on dating profiles that a potential partner will judge you as unqualified if you don’t have enough passport stamps.
Am Writing
Despite all that, my most visceral memory from that year will always be sitting in a car on a cold, rainy, fall afternoon with the mother of one of the shooting victims. We formed a friendship during that season and had gone out to a local school to talk about resilience. When we got back in the car to leave, she checked her voicemail, had gotten a call from her son who was refusing to go to school. Again